A Meta-Analysis of Artificial Intelligence in Dentistry: Diagnostic Accuracy and Clinical Implications Across Specialties

Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming a part of dental care, bringing promising improvements in diagnosing problems, planning treatments, and helping patients. This paper combines information from recent reviews and individual studies to understand how well AI works in different areas of dentistry and how it affects daily practice. The paper looks at how accurate AI is in tasks like spotting cavities, diagnosing apical periodontitis, checking for gum disease, detecting oral cancer, and supporting work in orthodontics and prosthodontics. AI often shows high accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity—sometimes performing as well as or even better than dental professionals. It also helps dentists work more efficiently, lowers their workload, and allows for earlier treatment. However, there are still challenges to overcome before AI can be used everywhere. These include limited access to good-quality data, difficulty in adapting AI systems to new situations, the risk of biased results, and complicated legal and ethical concerns. The paper concludes that clear rules, regular updates to AI systems, and teamwork between dental professionals, engineers, and ethics experts are needed. Taking these steps will help make sure AI is used responsibly and effectively in everyday dental care, leading to better results for patients and more reliable treatment.

کلیدواژه ها:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) ، Dentistry ، Dental technology ، Healthcare innovation